Our New Future Home!

Since we have sold our home we have been looking for a new house for a long time now and have had every emotion possible especially feeling anxious that time was running out and we wouldn't have a home to move into come the end of May. Well our patience paid off because "our house" was almost ready for us and it certainly wasn't in the neighborhood we were looking at. There is some work we need to do on it but overall it's in great shape! We absolutely LOVE it! LOVE it! LOVE it!


It was a foreclosure and so there were a lot more hoops to jump through but thanks to Grandpa Wayne he made it all possible for us. He called me today to let me know they accepted our offer and the official contract will be here in a few days. EEEEEKKKKK! So EXCITED!


I love the window on the right corner- that's my kitchen where I'll grow fresh herbs to cook with and maybe a couple of African violets too.


That bay window is the breakfast area and there's a small area between the garage and the fence that goes along past the back of the garage, there's another picture of it later, that's where I'll grow my small garden.

This is one of my favorite parts, yes I know its a street; at the end of the street is the elementary school. They can walk to school! Being the paranoid mom I am, I'll still wait for them at the corner but Avery can't wait to be a "walker". And in this neighborhood it's safe. Our home is like the second from the end of the cul de sac which is another thing we love!

So this is the entry. I LOVE the wood floors! To the right is the dining room, carpeted for some odd reason.

The carpeted dining room that leads to the kitchen. We have a different chandelier that we will put in.

My new kitchen and the windows that will be growing herbs soon! : ) And yes the previous owners took a lot of things from the house including ALL the appliances and the kitchen door handles and drawer pulls. Again LOVIN the wood floors!!

This might be one of my favorite parts. The island has stainless on it! We get to buy a cooktop for it as well. I was reading http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ about all the different surfaces she has in hers and I liked the idea of stainless and was ecstatic that it was in "our house!"

I love the chef's desk too. Yes, the oven and microwave have been taken and will be replaced with a double oven and microwave. We need to get handles and doorknobs for the pantry too.

This is the breakfast area that goes into the mud room, which has room for another fridge and has a 1/2 bath too. There is also another closet that we might make a extra pantry. We're going to pull out that old intercom box too and put a collage of pictures or just one big picture there. All the utilities are off so we're not sure what works. The initial inspection stated that everything works but they check the big things like faucets. There is a soft spot on the wood floor in this area and I'm hoping that we can save it; if not we'll have to tile from the kitchen to the mudroom.

Love the living room with the fireplace, wood floors, shelves and big windows. We are both grateful that there's no wood panneling on the walls that we'd have to paint.

The other side of the living room with the door to master bedroom, wet bar, and a back door.

Our lovely, : P master bathroom. The tub is super tiny and we plan on making it a large shower. I think the brass will have to go also.

And we follow the little big man up the stairs. I told the kids the first thing we need to do is teach Josh to climb down the stairs on his tummy. We'll have gates for a while of course but until he's more steady we all need to watch this busy boy around the stairs. I'd hate to have another child get stitches.

This is the gameroom at the top of the stairs. I love the cathedral ceiling. The kids three bedrooms are up here as well as two bathrooms and lots of storage.

Yes I LOVE this too! The upstairs fireplace and the balcony overlooking the backyard! The carpet has a few stains in it but is in fairly good shape. It's a shag carpet in a good neutral color.

This is a little playhouse addition to the back of the garage. It's pretty cute! It's small but painted pink inside with rose accents. My future garden is just past the little house between the lattice and fence.

This is our new backyard. Yes there is a spa but I'm not so sure if we're going to keep it or not. I love the covered patio and upstairs balcony! I'm so excited to move into this house and start a new chapter of our lives. This is the house we are going to grow old in and we love it! It's about a mile from the Houston temple, another plus!

We've met a bunch of our future neighbors and they all seem super nice. The neighbor on the opposite side of this fence, shown in the picture, is the assistant school nurse- she walks to work! Another neighbor across the street has her house up for sale and actually gave Spencer a tour of her home hoping we'd buy hers instead. Yeah, that didn't happen. Guess you get special treatment being in HFD uniform. : )

Easter

So we've tried to get our family Easter tradition down and for the second year we've had Saturday as the day the Easter bunny visits and the kids have an egg hunt. This leaves Sunday for us to focus on the real reason for our celebration, the Savior. We have a lesson about the atonement and will watch some movies that focus on the life of Christ.


So we started off with the Easter baskets left by the Easter bunny.

I love these pictures of Emily and her Easter basket.



Avery was given a large bunny which she carries from place to place. Avery LOVES bunnies and has slept with one very loved bunny for the past 8 years. It used to be fuzzy and white, but now is grey and very flat- like I said it's very loved!

Yes, the Easter bunny found this DS for the girls at a pawn shop for $35 and couldn't pass it up- so he says. She was super excited about it!

And we have Josh.....this was his second Easter but the first one he could participate in. He wouldn't let go of the Air Head candy. It must have been the colors and crinkly wrapper.

What a blondie!

The kids and their loot in their baskets! Avery and another bunny love.

Josh loved his football and there are those Air Head candies....

Josh looks so much like the other three kids. They all look so much like Dad!

So here goes the egg hunt outside. We let the younger two go first and then Jake and Avery ran out to get their share.

Emily found the eggs on the swings and around the play equipment

Josh got the concept of putting eggs in the basket but still needed a little help along the way. Plus it was getting really warm outside and the chocolate candy was starting to melt. We had to speed him up a little bit.

Little Emily collecting eggs. I'm not sure if I got a picture of her face at all.

Avery hunting for eggs also- still with the new bunny in her arm.

Josh found the one shiny egg.....

It took all of his best effort to get the eggs that were on the grass and in the meantime he'd spill the rest of the eggs in his basket. Toddlers are so fun!

Having to fill the basket again with the eggs just spilled. That basket looks empty without the Easter grass. Yes I am a paranoid mom not wanting him to eat it and choke on it so I eliminated it this year.

"Found another egg by my slide no if I could just get it in my basket without spilling....."

He's so cute looking for eggs! He actually just really loves to be outside regardless of what he's doing.

Harley loves Josh and was curious what they were all doing walking around the yard picking up things. Maybe he was helping.

Josh collecting and Harley looking.....

Josh carrying his basket and collecting eggs.

What a fun day but I didn't get a picture of Jake! So sad! He was there I promise!

So this was Sunday. It was a much more relaxing day especially with it being General Conference weekend. We watched the morning session of conference and had lunch between sessions. I made baby back ribs, mashed potatoes, a green salad, and resurrection rolls. After lunch we had a FHE on the life and resurrection of Christ before visiting Grandma and Grandpa Allred. We watched the afternoon session of conference there- kinda before coming back home so Spencer could go to work that night.

This is Avery enjoying a resurrection roll. This was the first year I made these and the kids had fun making them together.

Josh loved the meat and potatoes. He's a good eater!

Jake and his cheesy smile. I love this boy!

And the resurrection rolls.... the kids took their marshmellow which represented Jesus, rolled it in butter representing oils, rolled it in cinnamon sugar representing incense, then tucked it into a crescent roll pinching it all around. Put it in the oven, the tomb, and it comes out hollow because Jesus was resurrected. It was fun object lesson to do with the kids.

April Fool's Day

So I wanted to have fun this year with the kids and decided to actually attempt to celebrate the smaller holidays like St. Patrick's Day and April Fool's Day. It's been fun!

So this morning I put a drop of food coloring at the bottom of the kids cereal bowls under their cereal and after I poured the milk it changed color. Jake and Avery both had blue and Jake was the first to notice. "Hey the milk's blue!" Emily had purple.


This is Avery with her blue tongue and blue Cheerios.

When I finished making the kids lunches I quickly tossed in a fake spider that I constantly found around the house into Jake's lunch box. He told me when he got home that he screamed when he saw it. Oh how I would have loved to be there to see that one! I still laugh thinking about it.

I told the kids since it was April Fool's Day we would eat dinner backwards and we would have dessert first and have cupcakes for dinner. So I put them on the table and I love the reactions!


So first on the menu: "Surprise Cupcakes" which consisted of meatloaf with colored mashed potatoes on top.
I had to make another veggie too but didn't have time to figure out anything creative so I just did green beans with almonds.


I love Avery's face in this picture. "Those aren't cupcakes!", she said. "It's mashed potatoes!"


I asked what color cupcake they wanted and said that they could each have two. Most of them wanted one pink and one blue. It was fun.


They loved them! Emily was so funny to lick the potatoes like she does with frosting on cupcakes.


I thought I should do a close up of it all.

I really wanted to do something with their drinks too but ran out of time. Maybe next year I can freeze their cups half full then top it off and see their reactions then. Fun times!


I had to get a picture of Josh chowing down on his favorite meal. He loves his Momma's meatloaf and mashed potatoes!


Josh now enjoys putting things behind his chair and letting it fall to the floor. What a boy!

Now on to dessert. I made "Fish sticks"(peanut butter covered wafer cookies rolled in crushed cornflakes) and "peas"(rolled taffy pieces) with "ketchup" (seedless strawberry jam) to dip the fish sticks. This took me the longest time but it was fun to make and the kids loved it!

The eagerness on their faces! What is it?

And again, Avery with her taste testing abilities, has figured out the dipping sauce.

It was a fun dinner and I will for sure do it again.

Current Events

The past few weeks have been filled with all types of emotions. To start off, we sold our house!! It was very close to being on the market for 4 weeks. Although our realtor didn't get the pictures up until a week later, and who's going to look at a house without pictures?? Anyways we close on our house April 30th. Yea!! We are super excited that we sold it! That chapter is done! We have six weeks until we close. The lady that purchased our home has given us an option to lease until May 28th- something we might consider if we haven't found a house in the next few weeks.

We had our eyes set on a particular house we noticed back in November. It has such a great layout for our family and we were really bummed that it went into contract two days before ours did. TWO DAYS! SERIOUSLY?! We are both convinced that as much as we loved that house it just wasn't the one for us. To watch it for three months and it go into contract right before ours..... it just wasn't meant to be. We were all disappointed but accepted the reality.

Spencer has been back and forth with a few mortgage companies about getting a loan. The laws change so frequently that it's hard to keep up with and gets really confusing. Anyways it's been a huge issue to get them to include Spencer's second job. Two companies have told him that he has to be employed for a year but Spencer's found several documentations that state as long as it's proven as secure income it can be included as income. So frustrating! He has provided documentation supporting the security of his income including a supervisors letter. So, it's just a matter of finding a lender that is willing to work with us and see that his second job will continue. By the way October will be a year.

We've driven through the neighborhood several times and have seen a bunch of houses with the layout we really like. We are positive that things will work out the way that it best for our little family. With Spring Break ending we are sure that people have been working hard on getting their houses ready to put on the market making it the perfect position for us to be in; looking for a great house for a family of six. This is the time when people put their houses on the market and I'm so glad that we don't have to wait for our house to sell. It's such a huge weight off to have it already sold. Now it's the waiting game.....

On another note, since we sold our home, I was released as the YW President last week. It was a very bittersweet moment. The weeks leading up to selling our house; the weeks of packing and keeping it spotless for showings was really stressful for me. Having four young busy kids, a husband who works an average of 75 hour each week and YW twice a week was A LOT for me but I was able to do it for almost two years. It would have been welcome with all the selling preparations but it didn't happen. Apparently I can tolerate a lot and I now appreciate having more time with my children that I have been released from my calling and have sold the house.

Rodeo

Last year Spencer went to the Rodeo with Avery, Jake, and Grandpa. They saw Rascal Flats and loved it. They look forward to it every year! I missed the Rodeo last year but we decided to go this year with all the kids. I can't believe we waited until Spring Break to go. NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT RODEO DURING SPRING BREAK! It was so busy!

We parked across the freeway and walked. And walked. And walked. The kids thought it was fun to cross the bridge over the freeway. I think I need to get them out more.

There is always a surprise of what food you might find at the Rodeo. You'll find the typical funnel cakes, hot dogs, chili cheese fries, etc. But there are some exciting things dipped in chocolate. Chocolate dipped pickles- Seriously!? That's disgusting! They also had a sign for deep fried Oreos. Deep fried cheesecake. Deep fried Snickers. I just can't do it. I think I'd gag watching someone take a bite. I think I'm too addicted to Biggest Loser. I love that show. I'm planning on starting P90X in two days.

And my boy behind the wheel. That's a scary thought. Ten more years......

They love the Texas Longhorns. Do I see Aggies in their future? I think I'd prefer Cougars.

We had a lot of fun and next year we hope to stay for the Livestock and Rodeo Show and maybe the concert too. Jake was really bummed we left before the concert. I don't even know who was playing that night. Would have loved to see Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw, or Rascal Flats again. Until next year.......